It’s a a silent war that has been raging between users that want to squeeze out the most possible value in their Netflix memberships and the content providers who license their content by region. Stuck in the middle, it would appear, is Netflix itself.

In Canada, Netflix is often considered to be the anemic relative of its much brighter and healthier cousin in the United States. Netflix uses geolocation technology to determine where you are connecting from and provides you with the appropriate content based on that location. By using a service, such as Blockless, you can trick Netflix into believing you are actually located in the United States (or many other countries for that matter). When you do that, you have a completely different library of viewing options open to you.

Netflix isn’t the only service that “geoblocks” users from content. In the United States, Hulu is to television shows what Netflix is to movies (although Netflix is offering more television series these days, as Hulu seems to be adding more movies). Both services have been blocking content by region for some time now and, recently, both have been cracking down on the services that allow users to circumvent their location.

What this all boils down to is a service provider that is caught in the middle. Netflix is enjoying an influx of customers based upon the ability to get a lot of value for under $10 a month, while content providers are crying foul over them accessing content they shouldn’t. Users have some new options in Canada with both CraveTV and Shomi now offering content for users in Canada, without requiring an existing television subscription.

Netflix has made statements that imply the company would like this whole geoblocking issue to go away with content becoming available to everyone but it have to try keep everyone happy. It is stuck in a balancing act between keeping customers happy with the service over upholding the license agreements it has with the content providers.

The other issue at play here is the possible loss of jobs with companies that have stepped up to provide location changing services. Using these services is not technically illegal but they may, as is the case of Netflix, void the terms of use contract you've agreed to. However, these are legitimate services that could and likely will start to lose customers at an alarming rate if licensing becomes a global thing.

It’s hard not to look back at why this entire situation exists in the first place. In Canada, many of the CRTC laws surrounding content (which Netflix seems to evade anyway by the way) are out of date. Content providers controlled geographical areas of licensing in order to maximize and control advertising revenue in regional areas. Global distribution via the Internet was not around at the time these contracts and ideas were put into place, so licensing should change along with it. Of course, there is going to be a transition period but in the end it is just making it more difficult for customers.

Studies have shown (and have been backed up by own personal experience) that Canadians will pay for legally accessing content if it is reasonably priced and easy to implement. The more barriers, the more users will turn to piracy or more questionable practices to obtain said content. Perhaps one day soon the content providers will realize that they will be able to charge more for their content when service providers have more subscribers, and can spend more time delivering great content to users instead of playing monkey in the middle.